Dems: GOP to challenge voters Nov. 2

Dan Kulin

Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2004 | 11:20 a.m.

State Democratic Party leaders said Monday they have come across another plan by the Republican Party to disrupt the election -- this time by challenging some voters' registration on Election Day, which the Democrats said is intended to create long lines at the polls and discourage others from waiting to vote.

Meanwhile the state Republican Party's executive director said the accusations were outrageous and part of the Democrats' plan to accuse Republicans of "everything under the moon" and cast doubt on the results of an election the Democrats may challenge.

Lisa Moore, a Nevada voter protection coordinator for the Democratic Party, said she attended a poll monitor seminar at the Boyd School of Law at UNLV around noon Monday during which she heard a Republican representative tell the group they planned to give poll watchers hand-held computers known as personal digital assistants, to help them know which voters to challenge on Election Day.

Chris Carr, executive director of the state Republican Party, confirmed the poll watchers will use the computers, but noted that they had been used by Democrats in previous elections.

The small computers will contain a publicly available list of voters who cast ballots that day, he said.

"Anyone can look at a list of who's voted," Carr said. "It's public record. These are a lot of baseless accusations."

Lynnda Brown, a recent graduate of the law school, attended the seminar and is volunteering as a poll watcher for the Democrats. She said the Republican representative, identified as Robert Lee, a representative of UNLV's College Republicans group, told the roughly 20 potential volunteers that Republicans would provide then with Palm Pilots or something similar that would have the names of all registered voters in them.

Brown said Lee claimed he represented the party and said the poll watchers would be there to ensure the identity of voters.

"He kept saying that some people registered as Mickey Mouse or Mary Poppins. My impression was that they would look for people using fake names," she said.

Exactly how they would decide which voters to challenge and how that challenge would be made were not explained, she said.

Kevin Sheridan, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said Lee is a member of the College Republicans group but "has no affiliation with the Republican campaign or Republican National Committee."

"Their intentions are to take anything out of context, to launch pre-emptive strikes with false charges," he said.

Sheridan called the accusation that the Republicans will try to disrupt the election ludicrous.

"I think our PDAs (hand-held computers) are only for get-out-the-vote efforts, not to suppress voters," he said.

But the Democrats said they are convinced the Republicans intend to disrupt the election by challenging voter registrations.

Adriana Martinez, the state Democratic Party chairwoman, said she expects the Republicans will try to target inactive voters, and make other challenges based on residency discrepancies.

"This is part of a larger plan to bottleneck the process," she said, adding that if the Republicans can create long lines at some polling places on Election Day, those lines alone would keep some voters away.

The Democrats have not gone to Clark County elections officials with this specific concern, they said.

Moore said legally on Election Day, challenges to voter registration would have to be made by someone who lives in the district where they are lodging their challenge.

She said the Democrats will have lawyers at polling places to help voters whose registrations are challenged.

Sun reporter

Stephen Curran contributed to this story.

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